The camera-wielding owners and athletes behind Crested Butte’s Matchstick Productions had been eyeing that line in Alaska’s Tordrillo Mountains for years.

Last winter, snow conditions were perfect and the crew put the line on the to-do list. Cody Townsend stepped up and dropped into the ridiculously narrow chasm, plummeting more than 2,000 vertical feet through a cliff-lined choke that seems too tight. The 31-year-old skier’s segment in MSP’s “Days of My Youth” is storming the internet, with more than a million views and Townsend’s debut on ESPN’s SportsCenter.

MSP co-founder Murray Wais was behind the camera in the helicopter hovering above the dark funnel of snow and rock. He had full trust in Townsend, but the line was sketchy. He worried about barely covered rocks in the gorge.

“If you hit those rocks, it would be all over,” Wais said. “No one else dropped into it. Just Cody. In all honesty, there was quite a bit of danger but it was still straight forward. If you just went for it, it would be all good. He just had to go straight.”

Wais wasn’t overwhelmed with the footage he captured from the heli. Then he watched the POV footage from Townsend’s helmet-mounted GoPro.
“We knew that was one of the most special POV shots ever captured, that’s for sure,” Wais said. “So unique, so fast, so gutsy.”Read more…

The wilderness moved – and shook – to an urban setting earlier this month when a grassroots coalition called Sportsmen for Browns Canyon showcased its ongoing effort to preserve a portion of the Arkansas River as the nation’s next National Monument. The edgy multi-media display on the facade of the McNichols Building was a far cry from the peace and quiet of Browns Canyon, but it made the point.

“We just want to keep Browns Canyon the way it is – pristine and wild,” said Kyle Perkins of Trout Unlimited, coordinator of the group. “Our goal with the video event was to visually bring this amazing place to the heart of downtown Denver. We wanted urban residents to experience some of the grandeur and awe of Browns and to support our efforts to protect it for future generations.”Read more…

The kindness of strangers rescues this unnamed climber as he nears the top of the multi-pitch Kennedy’s Gully route in the Ouray Ice Park. This video has swept the interwebs in the last week. I love how the climber is so cool with nary a curse as the ice dissolves beneath his crampons. While he wouldn’t have decked if he fell – he appears to be dragging a lead rope — no telling where his last protection was placed and if it would have held a whipper on what looks like rotting ice.

If you missed the story in Friday’s Denver Post Sports section about blind athlete and successful Mount Everest climber Erik Weihenmayer of Golden taking up whitewater kayaking (or even if you read it), do yourself a favor and check out the video filmed by Eric Lutzens at the Clear Creek Whitewater Park:

The not-quite-carvy rides sport a chubby 150mm underfoot with a 3D “cleat technology” shape that grabs snow when angled. It’s a funky-looking ride for sure. But it looks like it can shred. This morning Drake dropped the first-ever footage of him and his Spoon in action in Little Cottonwood Canyon. He calls his pioneering sliding carve “slarving.” Give DPS some love on their Facebook page and possibly win a pair of Spoons.